April 22, 2007

Celebrate Earth Day & Join Me as a Greendimes.org Member

A couple of months ago I finally got completely overwhelmed by the amount of junk mail that was coming into my home and office. I was stunned by the fact that each week my family was filling our 64 gallon recycling bin - mostly with paper products (and of course the occasional empty wine bottle, but I digress). :-)

Every year more than 100,000,000 trees are chopped down and 28 billion gallons of water are wasted to produce junk mail. I decided to do something about it.

I researched the ways to eliminate the amount of junk mail we receive - to get our names removed from direct marketing lists and discovered many solutions, most of which can be found at stopjunkmail.org.

Ultimately I decided to join Greendimes.org. For a dime-a-day (only $36 per year), GreenDimes will reduce the amount of junk mail you receive, will help you maintain your privacy so your name doesn't get placed on more mailing lists and will plant a lot of trees on your behalf!

Greendimes has already:

- Stopped more than 276,000 pounds of junk mail
- Planted/saved 143,000+ treess
- Saved more than 707,000 gallons of water

... in the US and Canada and has plans to launch its service in the UK soon.

I don't usually tout businesses on this blog, but this one is worth an endorsement in my opinion. So, I invite you to join me as a member of Greendimes.org.

Here are some other ways we can also take better care of our earth - today on Earth Day and everyday!

* Turn your thermostat a degree lower in the winter. If every home in America did this, we'd save enough energy to power all the homes in Iowa for a year.

* Take a shorter shower. If Americans subtracted one minute from their daily showers, we'd save twice the amount of freshwater withdrawn from the Great Lakes every day.

* Reuse ribbon and wrapping paper. If two-thirds of Americans each saved an arm's length of ribbon this year, we could tie a bow around the earth!

These ideas are included in The Green Book, by Elizabeth Rogers and Thomas M. Kostigen, which will be available in stores and online June 19, 2007.

Comments

Do Not Mail Opt-Out Law would be fair to everyone.

The proposed recent "Do not mail" is an Opt-Out law. Only those not desiring advertising mail need opt-out. Anyone desiring advertising mail can do nothing - and continue to receive it. Why deny those wishing to avoid advertising mail the power to do so?

I do not consider handling unwanted advertising placed against my will on my personal property to be a civic obligation!

The US Supreme Court said in the Rowan case in 1970, ““In today's [1970] complex society we are inescapably captive audiences for many purposes, but a sufficient measure of individual autonomy must survive to permit every householder to exercise control over unwanted mail. To make the householder the exclusive and final judge of what will cross his threshold undoubtedly has the effect of impeding the flow of ideas, information, and arguments that, ideally, he should receive and consider. Today's merchandising methods, the plethora of mass mailings subsidized by low postal rates, and the growth of the sale of large mailing lists as an industry in itself have changed the mailman from a carrier of primarily private communications, as he was in a more leisurely day, and have made him an adjunct of the mass mailer who sends unsolicited and often unwanted mail into every home. It places no strain on the doctrine of judicial notice to observe that whether measured by pieces or pounds, Everyman's mail today is made up overwhelmingly of material he did not seek from persons he does not know. And all too often it is matter he finds offensive.”

Furthermore, the Supreme Court said, “the mailer's right to communicate is circumscribed only by an affirmative act of the addressee giving notice that he wishes no further mailings from that mailer.

To hold less would tend to license a form of trespass and would make hardly more sense than to say that a radio or television viewer may not twist the dial to cut off an offensive or boring communication and thus bar its entering his home. Nothing in the Constitution compels us to listen to or view any unwanted communication, whatever its merit; we see no basis for according the printed word or pictures a different or more preferred status because they are sent by mail.”

We need a nationwide “Do Not Mail” law to create a one-stop, convenient place for homeowners to give senders the aforementioned affirmative notice that we do not want certain kinds of mail sent to our homes.